Wednesday, April 8, 2026

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Opinion | 1000

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COMMENTARY

Listen Up

After years of seeing issues of great importance to the university community tabled by trustees, we applaud the hundreds of students who gathered together to let the board know they won't back down. Congregating in a large cluster outside the Administration Building last Friday, a number of student groups, including the Alliance of Lesbian-Bi-Gay-Transgender and Straight Ally Students and Coalition for Social Responsibility, came together to protest during the final Board of Trustees meeting of the semester.

COMMENTARY

Ads do not show all sides of conflict

Regarding the lengthy campustruth.org opinion statement in The State News ("Ads present often neglected viewpoint" SN 4/7), I would like to offer a reply on behalf of the Students for Palestinian Human Rights at MSU.

COMMENTARY

Student leaders are public figures at 'U'

As the outgoing programs committee chair of ASMSU's Freshman Class Council and the incoming College of Natural Science representative on ASMSU's Student Assembly, I have become familiar with the business of ASMSU as a student body.

COMMENTARY

Closing of ASMSU session warranted

I cannot express my anger at The State News enough over the recent articles and editorial regarding Academic Assembly's closed session during its election process this past Tuesday.

COMMENTARY

Students should chip in for riots

The MSU student body can be a positive voice in light of the March 28 weekend events by putting a donation container in each classroom, dorm and public place for "car repair donations" to be given to the students whose cars were damaged in the melee.

COMMENTARY

Student as teacher

Many children grow up watching "Sesame Street" and absorb a message of tolerance for everyone and their differences.

COMMENTARY

Midlife crises can hit at any point in life - not just age 40

Some people have midlife crises at age 40. They hit that dreaded age and start to reflect on their life and their accomplishments (or lack thereof). They know half of their life is over and start to flip out. Well, oddly enough, I seem to be having a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of 21.

COMMENTARY

Only just begun

For those who watched with anticipation, the collapse of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's center Wednesday was history in the making - the fall of tyranny and the rebirth of a people. It was like witnessing the climax of a well-known fairy tale: the part where Prince Charming (coalition forces) courageously rescues the beautiful princess (the Iraqi people) from the dark and cold prison of the evil queen (Saddam). But this real-life event is far more serious than any children's story.

COMMENTARY

Shut out

Although MSU's undergraduate student government doesn't truly govern anything, it is a tax-collecting student body charged with representing its constituents in the university's governance process and therefore, has an obligation to remain accountable to its members. On Tuesday, ASMSU's Academic Assembly was not accountable.

COMMENTARY

Numbers up

While our counterparts in Ann Arbor are witnessing tempers rise on account of the affirmative action lawsuit concerning their admissions policy, MSU is witnessing historic highs in minority enrollment. The Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance and Monitoring released its 2001-02 statistics Tuesday, and found that while Native American enrollment decreased 14 percent, Hispanics increased by 8 percent, Asian Pacific Islanders by 6 percent and blacks by 4 percent.

COMMENTARY

Anti-war protesters confused about war

Don't the anti-war protesters see that most of the Iraqi people are welcoming our military? So much good is coming out of this campaign: the ousting of a brutal dictator, the liberation of millions who have survived his tyranny, the democratization of an Arab nation and the revival of the Iraqi oil industry (which means cheaper gas for everybody). We're not going to occupy Iraq for 20 years, and we're not permanently seizing their oil wells.The people who protest along Grand River Avenue now would be the same people protesting government inaction in 10 years after Saddam's cronies plant anthrax in New York City, or after the dictator once again uses weapons of mass destruction on his own people.Anybody who doesn't see the logic behind the war has no comprehension of international affairs.The nature of modern warfare has changed so that a threat need not necessarily show up at our doorstep; our military is so advanced that we can meet the challenges of the future before they arrive.

COMMENTARY

Councilman wrong for riot solutions

I was pleased to see East Lansing officials are taking the weekend's disturbances seriously, but their solutions were a mixed bag of good and thick-headed ("Council to seek strict punishment for participants" SN 4/2). The idea that the Big Ten would forego tournament revenue in order to punish a school is simply ludicrous, and Bill Sharp should be embarrassed that he said it in public.

COMMENTARY

Reporter wrong for categorizing band

It is unfortunate Joseph Montes, out of a lack of truly interesting insight into the band Flatfoot's debut album, resorted to sophomoric complaints about the album's incapacity to fit into an "indie rock" category ("Flatfoot needs to make music to match its indie rock image," SN 4/8). While he astutely noted two of the members of the band wear thick-rimmed glasses, he obviously neglected to stop and ask himself, or anyone else with an inkling of knowledge about the band, whether the band is, in fact, trying to be an "indie rock" band.